Now a day, it is really important to know the best way to create your own URL shortener for promoting your business online. A lot of websites do not accept URLs that are shortened using “goo.gl”, “bit.ly” or similar kind of URL shorteners. Also, it is not a good practice to use that third party URL shortener when you have your own business and you are ready to promote in a professional way.

If you already have wasted time for this pretty simple task and ready to learn the easiest way to create your own URL shortener, you are in the right place!

Importance of Using Your Own URL Shortener

​If you search in Google and notice the lame way to promote business, you will laugh after reading this Article thinking they don’t have any idea about this pretty simple trick. You might also notice, some renowned businesses are being promoted online in a very odd way.

​Not sure what I am talking about? Let’s make it clear!

Visit Idealista.com (one of the top ranked classified sites in Europe) and search for homes that are being promoted there by "Airbnb". As “Idealista” do not allow those URL shorteners by goo.gl ,bit,ly or others, they are putting URLs in a very lame way that might confuse visitors finding the right property. This also results to reduce traffic in a dramatic way.

​Now, you might understand the importance of using your own URL shortener. So, let’s learn the easiest way to create a custom URL shortener for your own business.

As you are a business owner or promoting someone’s business, you or your client should have a website. Like, my website is "www.mustafizz.com". And this is a wordpress site. So I will teach you how to create my ownurl shortener using my wordpress site.

Create Your Own URL Shortener Easily

This is a very easy step by step guide to create your own URL shortener using pretty link plugin ( a wordpress free plugin). Follow the steps carefully:

Log in to your Wordpress site

(If you do not have any wordpress site you can simply buy a” .website” domain from Namecheap in just 88 cents and install wordpress.

Go to Plugins > Ad New

Write “Pretty link Lite” on the search box and go for it

Install And Activate the plugin

Hover your mouse over the Pretty link Plugin that you just have installed and activated

Click on “Ad New link”

Now you will see the box named “Target URL”. Here you need to insert longer version of the url that you want to make shorter.

The next box is called “Pretty Link”. You can see here, your website name is non-editable but you can write anything you want next to this part. Eg. http://www.mustafizz.com/visitnow

On the Next box, you can write a name of this shortened version of URL so that you can identify it. Although, it is not mandatory.

Now, scroll down a bit and Click on the button named “Create”. And here it is!

You will be able to find your shortened URL on the right side column called “Links”

​As your pretty short link is ready to use now, you can use this shortened link anywhere you want. And almost none of the websites will block you. You can leave your link on the top platforms like Facebook, Reddit (considering you understand the importance﻿﻿﻿ of ﻿﻿﻿Reddit), Digital Point (a very important platform for Forum posting), Quora (a question answers site) and anywhere you wish. This also gives your business a very professional look when you are going to insert the shortened link anywhere on the web!

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We will know how to create a Reddit account but before that, we must know why we should do this.

Reddit is one of the most important Social Bookmarking sites. A very large amount of traffic is available on Reddit. So it is a must to have a complete idea about Reddit.

We may have a lack of knowledge about Reddit as we have other easy platforms like Facebook where we can easily upload images and share feelings. But Reddit has a strict guideline for any action you are going to perform. People from Asia or similar continent, may not use Reddit regularly but people from first world country like the Unites States are very active there.

It is needless to say, Reddit is a very popular Social Bookmarking site. According to Alexa traffic rank (December 27, 2016), the global rank of Reddit is 24 and 7 in the United States. And this position is improving every month. So, it is needless to talk more about the popularity of Reddit.

Popularity Of Reddit

Visitors remain highly engaged and spend minimum 13 minutes on Reddit every day. You will be amazed once again to know, every Reddit user visits more than 8 pages every day. So, the bounce rate of Reddit is comparatively low.

Another important thing about Reddit is, among 234 million unique visitors, most of the visitors come from United Sates. To be exact, around 45.8% visitors from the US visit Reddit every day and most of them are male.

Reddit Geographic Audience

If you are still in doubt about the popularity of Reddit, please take a look at the most recent statistics given bellow:

More than 234 million unique users are highly active and engaged on Reddit

853,824 Subreddits are available on Reddit

11,464 active communities available Visitors from

Visitors from 217 different countries visit Reddit

More than 25 million people votes on Reddit every day

If we want to grab this huge amount of traffic, it is a must to get familiar with Reddit. Most importantly, everyone should know about the terms of use (TOU) as Reddit may ban accounts anytime. You may sign up today and notice your account got banned tomorrow.

Many of us just try to sign up and start submitting links. Actually, this process does not make any sense as that account may get banned immediately. And you cannot expect anything by submitting links that way.

If you are really planning to generate traffic from Reddit, the first aim should be increasing the “Karma”. We will know more about this later on.

How to Create a Reddit Account?

It is very easy to sign up or create a Reddit account. Still, some people might want to know the process.

Go to www.reddit.com and click on “Sign up” button (Top right on the Reddit Home page). A window will pop up.

Reddit Sign up Button

Fill up the necessary fields like username, password and email on the “CREATE A NEWACCOUNT” part and solve the captcha.

Reddit Sign Up Form

Click “Sign Up” and you will receive a confirmation link in your mailbox that you need to confirm.

Now your account is ready to go!

Reddit Dashboard

You will be in your Dashboard as soon as you are done with creating a Reddit account. You will instantly receive a welcome message in your Reddit inbox.

Your Dashboard should like:

Reddit Dashboard

After you click on your profile name (Top Right Corner), you will be able to see your activity. As a new user, there will be no activity and it will be mentioned on left top corner of the profile page. But you might notice 1 “Post Karma” provided by Reddit which is given automatically to all new users.

Now if you open the Reddit mailbox where you noticed a notification, is a welcome message describing some basic rules you must follow. It is highly advised to check the mailbox every time you receive any message.

Things to Remember

A common mistake that everyone makes in this step is, people start promoting their website links in this stage.

Never do this.

Please note it down that, it is recommended to put your website links in the comment section or anywhere on Reddit, once you have at least 100 “Post Karma” and “Comment Karma” (these are two types of “Karma”). Otherwise, you will not be benefitted.

Reddit Upvote and Down Vote

If you go to Reddit home page (click on Reddit logo located in the Left Top Corner), you will see so many posts which are called “hot post”. All of these posts have Upvotes and Downvotes (see image below for clarification).

Reddit Points

Upvote

DownVote

Upvote is similar to a “Like” button. Someone upvotes your post or image means, he/she likes it. You can upvote anything you like on Reddit.

DownVote is just opposite to UpVote. DownVote is similar to a “Dislike” button. You can Downvote anything that you don’t like on Reddit.

SubReddit

Reddit front page itself the main Reddit page. All other entries or topics that are being discussed on Reddit are Subreddit like games, wallpapers, music etc. To make it easier to understand, Subreddit means a category or section.

So, anything people post or discuss on Reddit, falls under a Subreddit. And it is important to choose the CORRECT Subreddit before you post anything on Reddit.

If you get confused to determine the Subreddit name seeing a post or topic that is being discussed on Reddit, look carefully just below the post and you will see /r/subreddit_name (See image for a better idea).

Now, you may get confused while choosing the correct Subreddit for your post. The best place to get complete idea about Subreddits is www.redditlist.com. From this site, you should select the Subreddit that one is related to your niche. You also can have an idea about how many people are engaged on that specific Subreddit. But never forget to read the rulesof the Subreddit before you post something.

Reddit Karma

Reddit Karma is a reward or point that you will gain when you post or comments will be liked or Upvoted by others. The more you will earn Karmas, the more you will be respected. Your profile will be popular and precious.

At the same time, if your posts or comments get down voted, you will lose Karma. And anyone can see your Karma as it is public for all users. Karma shows next to your username in your Reddit profile.

So, the main goal should be to help others by posting something informative, interesting and popular. Just make others satisfied and you will earn Karma.

Post Karma and Comment karma

You will earn Post karma by posting links on relevant Subreddit and if the post gets upvoted by others.

Similarly, the way to earn comment karma is to write comments to the posts. Once your comment gets upvoted, you will earn comment Karma.

Note: Be sure about one thing, you are not allowed to post on all Subreddits, if your profile is not matured enough. And your Karmas will not help if you don’t follow the rules. Once you ignore the rules, your account will get banned immediately.

Easy way to earn Karma

“Wallpapers” is very popular Subreddit on Reddit. A lot of people remain active on this subreddit. This is why it is easy to attract people and earn Karma quickly.

The URL for this subreddit is www.reddit.com/r/wallpapers . Once you visit this Subreddit, you will notice, so many people are engaged there.Before posting anything you must read the rules stated for this specific Subreddit. Otherwise, you may get banned anytime. Most important things you must know are:

Wallpaper must be Unique (never posted by others before you)

Wallpaper size

Recommended wallpaper sizes are:

Width

Height

1024

600

768

768

1280

720

1280

768

1280

800

1280

1024

1360

768

1366

768

1920

1200

1440

900

1600

900

1600

1200

1680

1050

1920

1080

2560

1080

2560

1200

2560

1080

2880

1800

3840

2160

5120

3840

Before posting images according to Reddit “TOU”, follow the steps to make the image “ready to post”:

Before posting images according to Reddit “TOU”, follow the steps to make the image “ready to post”.

Create an account on Imgur.com or Flickr.com. This site will help you to choose a popular and HD images.

Check if the image you just have downloaded is uniqueFor checking uniqueness, visit karmadecay.com and upload the imageIt will show you if the image is unique or not.

Resize the image if requires. Eg: [1920*1080]

Go to imgur.com site and upload the image

Collect the image “Direct link” from imgur.com

Now post the image “Direct link” on the “Wallpaper” Subreddit.

Now your image is ready to post on “Wallpapers” Subreddit. Follow the steps given below for posting the image successfully:

Go to www.reddit.com/r/wallpapers

Click on submit a Wallpaper

Submit the direct image link that you collected from imgur.com site

Write an awesome Title (Do not write Sad or disturbing title ) and write image size next to the title

Choose a Subreddit “wallpapers”

Solve the Captcha

Click on “Submit”

If you get any message as soon as you submit the post, there is something wrong. And the message will describe what you need to fix.

​

Otherwise, everything is fine!

Note: Do not try to post on Reddit one after another. Wait for at least 5 to 10 minutes after submitting a post.

​

AskReddit ( /r/AskReddit )

“AskReddit” is a very interesting Subreddit where a large number of people remain active most of the times. For the beginners, this Subreddit is a great place to increase comment Karma. Just need to select an interesting question from this Subreddit and write a proper answer. If your answer is correct and interesting, you will earn “upvotes” easily.

For increasing Comment Karma, follow the simple steps:

Go to www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit

Select an interesting question

Search google.com and pick an interesting answer for the question.

Customize the answer in your own way

Go to comment section of the Question you decided to answer

Write the answer you just have customized

Save the Answer

If anyone writes something to your comment, try to write the comment back clicking on the “reply” button.

Now, watch this 10 minutes video and get a complete idea about how to create a Reddit account and some more features you must know!

​Schedule post using Redditlater

Redditlater is a very useful tool that you can use to schedule your post on Reddit. This tool posts for you according to the time you set.

Unfortunately, this is not a free tool. But you can schedule only one post per week. For enjoying unlimited access, you need to spend $20 per month.

I still suggest the tool as it provides amazing features. The main feature is, it analyzes and delivers a scheduled post for you on the best day and time.​